Recorded live at Silence Sounds in Guelph Canada, the duo of Xavier Charles on clarinet and Eric Normand on electric bass & objects eschew idiom in favor of their unique natural language on their instruments, applying patient development of truly idiosyncratic and fascinating command through a single extended work punctuated in seven diverse passages.
"The thirty-five-some minutes on this cd might consist of seven separate parts, according to the cover, but it plays as one radical piece of improvised music. Here we have Xavier Charles on clarinet and Eric Normand on electric bass and objects. Both of them have quite a career in improvised music and they match together very well, when it comes to a radical approach of their instruments, the unusual way of playing these instruments and making them sound like something else altogether. They scratch, bit, blow, bow and who knows whatever else their instruments and come with music that is thoughtful, loud, quiet, extreme, musical, atonal and all of that in a relatively short time span and in rapid succession. Sometimes the clarinet and bass are not to be recognized at all, and sometimes they have a very clear presence. The music is a wild ride, most of the time, with no hands on the wheel; see what happens then, seems to be their motto. With their experience in radical free music they sure know how to respond to each other, going from one place to the next; react, subtract and attract, respond, question and then do the opposite. Just because you can, seems to be their modus operandi. This is thirty-five-some minutes of sonic bliss, splintered and clustered, a force."-Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly